How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong

An anonymous reader writes "Wired has a look at how the good and bad of Apple, their Yin and Yang, have come together to form a company that actually works. The piece looks at Steve Jobs' unusual and abrasive management style, otherwise known as 'Management Techniques From the Dark Side'. It's essentially a list of counterintuitive, suspicious-seeming and downright evil management techniques that work - for them."

Comments

Re:Handicapped

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's no easy-to-find spot and he's in a hurry, Jobs has been known to pull up to Apple's front entrance and park in a handicapped space. (Sometimes he takes up two spaces.)

At the risk of being modded into oblivion, what a dick move. But then again how many handicapped people frequent their office?

What if his WiFi was out and he had to run a cable from his parking space to his office? So that he could still work from his car like some sort of homeless roving guy? Try working like that for a week and you won't be able to walk either. No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame!

Re:Handicapped

[Anonymous Coward]

It's possible those spaces are for the emotionally handicapped.

Re:Handicapped

[eln]

I don't know, but I bet they were all making handicapped faces when he did that.

Re:Its not hard - most managers are tools

[ubrgeek]

>fuelled by a mediocre knowledge of PowerPoint

Hey! I resent that. And I can prove it's not true. I've got a 70-page presentation that I'd like to share. I'll read through every single slide and, to keep you interested, it's got all kinds of text that flies in from the left and fades out and ... ;)

Re:They Be The Opposite

[Life2Short]

It's like the joke about the two lawyers in the woods who stumble across a bear. The first lawyer begins to run, and the second says, "Hey, forget it, you can't outrun a bear." The first lawyer yells over his shoulder, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you."

Apple has pulled their share of disasters as well, but when you look at Apple's competition, their products are often mind-numbingly BAD. VISTA? Earlier online music purchasing systems? Dell and Gateway computers?

Apple isn't all that great, it's just that the competition sucks. I mean when the Asus eee-pc is the most encouraging thing you've seen come to the tech table in awhile...

Re:What a silly article

[WhiteWolf666]

Apple is irredeemably evil, and more obsessed with proprietary secrets than Microsoft, however, Apple doesn't practice 1/2 of the dirty business games that Microsoft plays.

Partnering with Microsoft is the kiss of death. Period. Microsoft will do legal & illegal things to fuck you, and then worry about the consequences later.

Apple doesn't do this; so even though Apple is a brutish sort of company, they're easier to do business with. Lawful Evil > Chaotic Evil ;-)

charlie and the chocolate factory

[varmint jerky]

For years I've felt that Steve Jobs is kind of like Willy Wonka. You remember what happens when you cross Willy Wonka? Next thing you know, you're a freakin' snozzberry.

Re:charlie and the chocolate factory

[wass]

Oh please, I cannot allow such distortion of history to stand unchallenged. ;-)

First of all, it was Blueberries that errant employees of Willy Wonka turned into. Not Snozzberries. Snozzberries were an item on the lickable wallpaper, where Mr. Wonka announces that 'we' are the music makers, and 'we' are the dreamers of dreams.

But speak of a reality-distortion field. Who the hell has a freaky waterfall tunnel in the factory workplace that you need to travel through by paddle boat, showing pictures of chickens getting decapitated and worms on peoples' faces? What OSHA committee endorsed that?

And don't forget testing experimental pharmaceuticals and novel synthetic candies on live Oompa Loompas. I believe this is what you were referring to in your comment. Putting Oompa Loompa after Oompa Loompa to a first-hand experimental safety test of the dinner gum, even after they have consistently turned into blueberries.

How did Oompa Loompas ever stand to work for this guy? Oh yeah, that's right, the convenient displacing of thousands of Oompa Loompas from their native homeland, exploiting their addiction to cocao beans, playing upon their fear of the native fauna by promising them safety, and literally paying them beans for their extended labor in extremely unsafe work condictions.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious I saw that Gene Wilder movie a few dozen times too many as a kid (read the book a whole bunch too). BTW, IMHO, Gene Wilder was a way better Willy Wonka than the Michael Jackson-esque Johnny Depp in the remake. And I say this as a huge Depp fan.

Re:He needs to get towed a few times.

[Anonymous Coward]

Having the car towed, crushed and cubed would take care of this for the moderately rich. We buy cars of price proportional to our wealth, after all.

The superrich like Jobs are another matter. Perhaps it would be more fair to remove his legs such that he would then qualify for the space in which he parked.

Re:Handicapped

[ajcham]

It seems strange to me that you would loosely estimate the weight of a car to the nearest 1000 pounds, yet provide accuracy of 5 decimal places in the metric conversion.

Re:Handicapped

[HiVizDiver]

But then again how many handicapped people frequent their office?

Everyone who uses a Mac.

ZING! I'll be here all week! Be sure to tip your waitstaff, they're working hard for you tonight.

mod -1, Flamebait

;-)

Re:He needs to get towed a few times.

[russotto]

OK, I didn't bother looking up his net worth, but my net worth is negative. I owe a mortgage company, a car loan, and a couple of credit cards like just about every other working American.

Could be worse. When I first read that statement, I misread it as "I _own_ a mortgage company". Which is WAY worse nowadays.

Re:completely ignorant

[Ma8thew]

Apple actually bought CUPs, and hired its lead developer. If that's not support I don't know what is.

Re:What a silly article

[the_B0fh]

Having used windows, I wouldn't characterize the taste as "kool-aid"...

Re:Evil Works

[nine-times]

The idea behind the US Constitution was to put in place a system that would have a good chance of working no matter what idiots were at the helm.

Yeah, but at what happens when you put actual idiots at the helm.

Re:What a silly article - Mod Parent Up

[Intron]

It helps if you imagine John Hodgman's voice reading the Wired article.

Re:one point both actors missed...

[Wooky_linuxer]

You should be happy both Wonkas were goatse-less instead of complaining.